In the midst of releasing my forth album I figured I’d take some time to write about the arts and my time spent with them.

On Monday June 4th 2018, my friend Aden and I finally put up preorders for our new album “Omnition” under our band name COSM.  The project took around five years to finally reach completion.  Now you may be wondering “what the hell took so long?” Well, there are a few different things to blame.  First off, writing music with other people can always be difficult as everyone has their own schedule and life. Secondly, the music we were writing was so large and with so much instrumentation that I personally wasn’t able to record and mix it into a result that was acceptable; after all I’m only one completely untrained person. Thirdly, we actually set out to only complete an EP.  We finished our six song album last year but after someone reached out to us multiple times seemingly showing interest in signing our project we put on the brakes.  We were told that our music was good but that labels don’t like to release EPs (news to us) so they asked if we’d be interested in making a full length.  At first we just laughed, that was the craziest idea ever.  We’d just spent years painstakingly finishing our EP while screwing up career paths, relationships…all in the name of putting our heart and soul into something.  Why the HELL would we do even more? As we continued thinking about it; the music industry has changed so much, how would we alone launch this beautiful project into the world and find an audience?  Slowly but surely we decided to give it a go.

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Hello…it’s been a while.  I just wanted to pop in here and give a general update on all my musical ongoings.

NEW RECORD:  COSM

First off, I just finished a new record with my friend Aden Oxenreider under the band name COSM.  We were set to release the album as an EP last year but after some label attention we decided to make the record a full LP instead.  Five years in the making and it’s finally finished.  Its a collection of around 11 songs and I couldn’t be more proud of the musical ground we covered.  It’s truly a work of art. Seeing that it will be released by a label I can’t quite say yet when it will come out but hopefully sooner than later.

NEW BAND: THE LENSE

I recently auditioned for and met up with a fellow by the name of Josh Buma out in California for his new project titled “The Lense”.  Josh basically has an LP worth of material that I’ll be adding my vocals to.  The music is pretty heavy but not without some great atmospheric sounds.  I was instantly drawn to the tunes if not slightly intimidated by some of the aggression haha.  Either way I’m looking forward to getting to work on this new endeavor now that COSM is finally wrapped up.  We’re hoping to release the album this year if things all go well.

PHYLLOTAXIS:

As for my personal music I haven’t written anything in a long time.  My last album The Woe of the Crow left me pretty exhausted and sadly I never received much feedback on it from anyone, even my own music colleagues.  One such comment from a friend was as simple as “it kinda sounds like a pop album…I was surprised”. Having worked on the album on and off for four years and having written, recorded and mixed everything by myself; the lack of reception was definitely disappointing.  The music industry is still in a weird place and it’s hard to understand.  I’m also not one to follow trends and I’m not a fan of social media and marketing as I find some of it truly disgusting.  This could all very well be my downfall as an artist but some part of me still believes that if I make good music from the heart good things will happen.  Sorry for complaining but this is what I do for a living.

As for covers and youtube, I’m going to start trying to upload some more simple stuff this year;  vocal covers to karaoke tracks and instrumentals.  I’ve taken a lot of this cover stuff a little too seriously throughout the years and I’d simply like to just have some more fun with it and showcase my range.  I’m sure I’ll still get the same loving “this is autotuned” comments even though I don’t use autotune haha but…alas…everyone loves to bitch on youtube about things they don’t understand. :)

VAGUS NERVE:

As some of you know I am the vocalist for a band called Vagus Nerve and we released an EP titled Visceral a few years back.  It was also received rather minimally.  We had some attention from labels and such but seeing that we all live in different areas scattered across the US it was difficult for us to all make big commitments unless financials made sense.  We’re not teenagers anymore and some of us are married so giving up large chunks of time to tour and not only miss out on job security/money to then only make small touring cash was simply not in the cards unless a label wanted to truly invest in the band.

The material was all written primarily by Doc Coyle whom is now part of a band called Bad Wolves.  They’re currently blowing up and gaining a lot of momentum so if we ever do more as a band, it won’t be happening for a while I’m afraid.  I do love what we created though and am always willing to do more.  I also wish Doc well with his new endeavor.  Music is not an easy business and he’s been at it for a long time.

THANK YOU:

To anyone that bothered to read this and is interested in my work, I want to say thank you.  I’m very happy if anything I’ve created means something to you or helps you transcend even a few fleeting moments of sadness or hardship.  Music has surely been there for me throughout the years and I’m sure I wouldn’t survive without it.